Chapter 26
I’m starting to feel like I live at King’s Cross station. I’ve probably been here more times in the last two weeks than I have in the last decade. At least today I can eat. I feel strangely cool and calm.
I’m going to see my dad today. For the first time in twenty years.
I find I don’t have the compulsion to go over every possible scenario of what might happen.
How many times in the past few weeks have I fantasized about how something is going to go, only to meet with disappointing reality?
If I don’t have illusions then I can’t be disillusioned. I’m basically cheating sadness.
Plus . . . I really don’t remember my dad all that well. A shadowy figure at a couple of early birthdays. A trip to Nando’s. A few gifts and cards that tailed off in my preteens. It’s not much to build a picture out of.
When I get to the address, it’s smaller than I imagined.
It’s a pretty, redbrick house on the corner of a suburban street, split into flats.
From the outside I can already tell there’s no garden.
For some reason, whenever I daydreamed about my dad, he’d always be in a garden.
Kicking a ball around with Leila or sipping a beer with Leila’s mum.
Although now that I’ve met Leila, I can’t imagine her involved in any form of sport.
I ring the doorbell for the ground-floor flat. Nothing stirs.
Well . . . this is going to be anticlimactic if no one’s home.
I ring the doorbell again. Shit. It’s not like I could call ahead, but maybe I should have come on a weekend. Urgh. I can almost hear my mother’s voice in my mind. Why did you think anyone would be home on a Monday afternoon? Other people have these things called jobs, Becky.
I stand on the doorstep thinking about all the things I could have bought with that eighty quid I spent on the train ticket.
Then there’s movement inside. Someone is shuffling along the hallway. The door opens and . . . Leila emerges. It takes her a millisecond to place me out of context.
“Oh, it’s you,” she states. I can’t read any emotion behind it, if there is any.
“And it’s you,” I say. I haven’t been letting myself think about Leila—I felt too heinous about the last thing I said to her—but unexpected warmth spreads through me at the sight of her. I realize that I’m thrilled to see her. “You went home, then?”
“Didn’t have a choice.” She shrugs.
We stand staring at each other for a moment. She’s wearing bright turquoise pajamas with sparkly rhinestones. Her giant slippers are white and fluffy, like she’s wearing two dead poodles on her feet.
“Come in.” She stands to one side.
I follow her through the communal hallway and into their flat, noticing her pajamas also say “Sleeping Booty” on the bum.
We enter straight into the living room. There’s a beige carpet, a cream sofa, a giant, flat-screen TV that’s a little too big for the room.
There’s a coffee table with Scrabble tile coasters.
A big, close-up photo of a flower hangs on the wall. It’s so . . . normal.
I don’t know what I was expecting. Of course it’s normal. Where did I think they lived? The inside of an alien spaceship?
“Do you want a drink?” she asks.
“Er, yeah.” I’m still looking around, trying to absorb every little detail. “Please.”
“What do you want?”
“Er, tea?”
“OK.” She pads into the kitchen. I take the opportunity to move closer to the bookcase, which has a few photos on it.
There’s one of small Leila in a ball pit.
There’s one of a slightly bigger Leila eating some cotton candy.
There’s one of her in a uniform standing between her two parents, presumably on her first day of school.
I look at Dad and think, if I passed him on the street, I wouldn’t recognize him.
I’m not proud of it, but the next thing I think is I’ll never have a photo like that.
There isn’t one here of me. Nothing that would hint that the man in the pictures has another child. Suddenly I feel like I want to cry. All my calm on the way over here has evaporated.
“Why do you look like you’re about to cry?” Leila reenters the room and hands me a mug of tea.
“I . . .” I don’t try to lie to her, because it’s impossible. “I’m not in any of the pictures.”
“Why would you be? We met the other day,” she comments with her usual grace and sensitivity.
I don’t say anything and pull myself together. I decide not to keep looking around their flat, in case it upsets me further. I’ll just stare at a bit of carpet as I wait for Dad.
“So when is . . . when are your parents back?” I ask. I try to sound casual but my heart starts racing.
Leila’s eyebrows raise. “After work,” she says. “About six.” I look at the clock. It’s one.
“Is it OK if I wait here for . . .” I trail off.
“For Dad?” she finishes.
“Yeah,” I answer. I can’t quite bring myself to call him that out loud or admit that I’m here to see him. Even though I blatantly am.
“You’ll be waiting a while,” she says. “He doesn’t live here anymore.”
My head spins to look at her. “Huh?”
“It’s just me and Mum.” She gestures around the place.
“I . . . what?! Since when?”
“About eight years ago.” She shrugs as if she’s telling me where the nearest Tesco is.
“I . . . what?” I nearly spill my tea. “What happened?”
“They fought a lot. Eventually he had enough, I guess. I came home from school one day and he was gone. Mum was down for a while. Like, really down. But she’s better now. I don’t see Dad much.”
We stand in silence for a moment. Leila plays with her nails while a mixture of feelings floods through me.
Disappointment that today is not going to be the day that I see my father again.
Confusion as I scramble to piece together a very different picture than the one I’ve been living with.
Sympathy for Leila going through that. Relief that it wasn’t just me he left because I’m defective in some way.
Which I know is irrational . . . Of course I’m not. But I can’t help feeling that way.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I wonder aloud. I can’t believe, in the whole evening we spent together at Max’s flat, she didn’t say anything about any of this.
“You didn’t ask.” Leila goes to sit down on the sofa. “You didn’t ask anything about Dad, or my home life, at all.”
Shame courses through me. She’s right. I didn’t. It was too painful for me, but I realize that I’ve inadvertently been selfish.
“Seeing as you didn’t want to ask and it’s not the most fun topic of conversation for me either,” Leila continues, “I didn’t see the need to bring it up.”
Leila hugs her knees to her chest, scrunching herself into a ball.
The image in my mind of her life rearranges itself.
She’s not living a charmed life within the bubble of infinite, protective love of two steady parents who never do anything wrong; she’s just like me.
She’s just like most people, really. Her parents are just human beings with their own special flaws and shortcomings, ready to pass onto the next generation.
I watch her playing with the fluff on her slippers.
When I first met her I thought we were complete opposites.
But I see now that we’re not so different.
Our defenses just manifest in ways that look different.
She keeps all her mess on the inside and I keep it on the outside .
. . Both fine methods of avoiding dealing with anything.
“When did you last see him?” I ask. I timidly move across the room to join her on the sofa.
“For years I didn’t. But now I do, sometimes,” said Leila. “Saw him at Christmas. Months will pass and you don’t hear anything. You have to be the one to make the effort.”
“So you have his new address?” Something inside me lights up.
“Yep,” Leila says. “I’ll give it to you. I never gave him your first letter, if you were wondering.”
“Why not?” I ask, although I’m glad that she didn’t. Relief washes over me that he’s never going to read it.
Leila eyeballs me. “Wasn’t sure you really meant it. Unless, of course, you’re here now just to reinforce you never want to see him? In case he didn’t get it the first time?” She smirks.
I smirk back. She’s right, obviously. “Yeah. OK. I didn’t really mean it.”
I think back to what Angie said, about not being honest with myself about why I sent the letters, about sending them in anger.
I thought I was trying to find closure in my relationship with my dad, but I think really I was just trying to get his attention.
Given that I felt compelled to come all the way here, it’s become obvious that maybe what I wanted is to see him again.
Whatever form that takes, however it goes.
It might not be what I dreamed of as a kid but it could be .
. . something. Maybe Leila could even come with me.
I realize Leila and I have lapsed into silence again. I remember that I’m still holding a cup of tea and take a sip.
“Sorry you’re not going to see him today,” Leila says.
“That’s OK.” I smile. “I get to see you.”
“Thought you didn’t want to see me.” Leila tries to sound impassive but she can’t keep a hint of hurt out of her tone.
I wince. I feel so bad about what I said to her. Doubly bad because now I know I’d made all these wrong assumptions about her.
I take another sip of tea and ready myself for the most recent in a queue of apologies I have to make.
“I’m sorry, Leila,” I say. “I was being childish. I was in a bad place and, well . . . I was just jealous of you because I thought you had a dad and I didn’t.
” It sounds so incredibly lame when I say it out loud, but that’s the truth.
“So now you know that I don’t, we can be friends?” Leila remarks. “What if I did have a good relationship with Dad? What if he was a shit father to you and the perfect one to me? That still wouldn’t be my fault. It wouldn’t make the way you treated me OK.”
“You’re right.” I nod, my cheeks flushing. “It wouldn’t have. I guess I’m not excusing myself, I’m just explaining.”
Leila stops fiddling with her slippers and looks at me. “OK,” she says brightly. “I accept your apology.”
I feel a rush of gratitude that she didn’t leave me groveling for longer.
If it were me I probably would have milked that.
I consider hugging her but can’t quite find the confidence yet.
Maybe one day we’ll feel comfortable enough.
It’s early days. I reach over and give her a feeble pat on the arm instead.
She watches my hand on her forearm in amusement.
“So, are you heading back to London?” she asks, when I’m done patting her.
“I guess,” I say, realizing I don’t want to. I want to stick around. I want to know everything about her life, not the version I’d made up in my head. I have so many questions. But I don’t want to impose. She’s probably had enough of me, given everything that’s happened.
“I mean, you don’t have to go,” she says.
“Oh, cool.” My heart flutters. “You’re not busy?”
“No.” She smiles. “Not busy. Want to watch something shit on TV?”
“Yeah.” I grin. “I do.”
I have a lifetime to get my questions answered. For now it’s enough that I have a real-life sister and we’re about to hang out watching TV together, like real-life sisters do.
“Leila,” I ask, “do you have a pad of paper?”